Since I'm now eligible to do L3 missions for home base corp I decided to treat myself with a new ship.

Been testing 2 different kinds of Battlecruisers, the Amarr Prophecy and Gallente Myrmidion.
With Myrmidion I have a bit less defense but slightly better targeting range and can use 4 sentry drones. The Prophecy has more defense, less targeting range and can use 3 sentry drones.

I opted for the Amarr, mostly because it looks very cool but also since I don't think I will be able to utilize the extra range in L3 missions.
And yesterday invested in following setup.

Notes
The bouncers have targeting range of 94 km, I could change to Garde instead for more damage but they have a very short range.
If I want to maximize targeting range on ship, and use the full range of sentry drones, I can use targeting range script in sensor booster and then have 96 km. But since I've done a fair few L2 missions and assuming L3 will be very similar then script won't be necessary. Will still have them in cargo just in case.
I can also change the sentry rig for a cap recharger, I will then have stable cap at 41%. But I've never tried sentry drones before so want to have a go at it first before changing. All I need to do is remember to shut of the repair module and don't have it constantly running like I usually do.
Slow boating to accelerator gates will be a pain though, but guess I'll have to live with that.

For now I'm quite happy with my new boat. If any of you have suggestions then those are most appreciated.

Are the cap rechargers really necessary? I know lasers are meant to be quite thirsty. Repairer won't (shouldn't) be running permanently, so you don't really need to be anywhere near cap stable in that regard. Might be able to fit a burner instead to aid your mobility perhaps?

Other than that, not really familiar with amarr ships at all, nevermind this particular one, so can't really comment on the drone-laser balance in the build.

Switched one of the cap rechargers for a 10MN experimental afterburner. Helped a lot when slow boating towards accelerator gates.

And I think I put the boat through the ringer.
A mission called "The Mordus headhunters", 2.5k LP reward. My thought is that amount of LP's is a measurement for how hard the mission is, asked Bal and he thought the same. Done a couple of L3 missions and they never rewarded anything above 1k LP's.
And it was tough.
First room was quite easy, lots of Caldari frigs and Cruisers, but they where mostly focusing on my drones. So when all where dead I was short 1 gobbo and shield was at 80% (I'm using an armour boat)

Next room, and last, was when it started to get exiting. Suddenly I had 15+ ships all going after me. Same as before, Caldari frigates and cruisers, but a whole lot of cruisers with missiles. Loads and loads of missiles.
Shield went and I started to take armour damage, pumping the repairer was a good idea, for about a minute. Then it was constant repair or death. Armour was at 30% when I was down to the two last cruisers, nearly out of juice so had to stop repairing and hope.

Went well in the end. 2.5k LP's, 3 million in bounty and mission reward, plus looted about 7 million worth.
Really like my Cruiser I built from Nosts and Arcs suggestions (still may favourite ship), but there's no way that would have survived this onslaught.

I do have an idea about the cruiser I'm thinking about testing. The omni is nice and all, but for gobbos it doesn't do that much. So I'm thinking about moving that out for more shield rep or a thermal hardener. Both would make it a whole lot sturdier.

If some how players work out how to do it faster so the average time taken which is tracked for all missions starts to drop then the LP/Time/isk is reduced

So a confusing a long winded way to say yes more LP = more difficulty

With the pathch nerfing recycling of mission loot, less people will loot / salgvage missions so the time taken from opening to closing the mission will be reduced, the auto balance will decide the mission is simpler so you will get less isk/LP from missioning post the summer patch so its likely to be a double wammy on mission running.

A long time ago Bal hinted the Dominix as an option for BS. Since then I've been going back and forth between Gallente and Amarr BS, then back again and so on...

Last month I've almost solely been training gunnery skills. Started with the suggestions for the Arbitrator and I liked that so it continued with same idea for my BC. 27 of April I had 294k points in Gunnery skills, today I have 1.2M points. I don't just want to be able to use guns, I want them to be somewhat effective too.
Since I liked having guns fitted I've been trying to find a ship that would be similar in the idea as the Prophecy and Arbitrator ship. I still want to use drones as a main but have guns as extra fun.

Finally found one, what I most like about it is that it's versatile. I can equip it for max gun damage, max drone damage or something in between like my BC. At the moment I've opted for middle of the road kind of thing.

So without further ado I give you "The Beast".

(Why it's camo painted I can't understand, that thing is big as a barn and looks like one)

Notes
Only thing I haven't really set is the 1600mm plates, I'm still contemplating changing it for an adaptive energy II or a third drone damage module.
Been going through fittings published, and seems many think it's a bad idea to go "middle of the road", but I like it and think I'm going to use it until I feel the need to change. For example fitting a MJD when my plans are mostly to just park it, hence the armour plates and hardeners, I do like options. And I have every confident in my ability to over pull, having a MJD gives me the option to move away and start over with sentry drones.

Afterburner is just there because this ship is soooo slow that without it I can go take a wee or put on a pot of coffee while this hunk of metal is moving towards an accelerator gate, and still be moving towards it when I get back.

I also went way off the reservation when it comes to ship cost, navy issue was really expensive. I had to dig deep to afford it, still have a couple of 100M ISK left (think enough to buy and fit a T1 BS). But hopefully I won't destroy it right away, like usual, so it can make up the cost. And since I don't like to strip ships I still have my others fitted and can start over quite easily.

Please give input if you have any. I'm always open for ideas, just might not follow every advise

Next up for me in plans is going back to complementary skills like Navigation and getting most of Engineering to 5, I do enjoy passives. Sentry drones 5 would be nice for the extra 10k range with T2 drones, but 21 days training so I'm holding that off for the time being.

Obion wrote:
Please give input if you have any. I'm always open for ideas, just might not follow every advise

Now your Cooking. Find something that works for you and stick with it. No need for much with the PvE part of EvE and as long as your holding your own and working with your groove its all good. Most will specialise for either drones or guns but its nice to have them compliment each other.

Obion wrote:(Why it's camo painted I can't understand, that thing is big as a barn and looks like one)

It's obviously to blend in with the space jungles, silly!

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Bear in mind this is my personal preferences:

I'd probably use a 2nd 1600mm Plate and an Energised Adaptive nano membrane instead of the thermal and kinetic in the lows.

And I'd be tempted to replace one of the drone lows with a Magnetic Field stabiliser for more gun damage. Though I suspect with your training distribution, you'd probably loose more raw damage off the sentries (if not the combat drones) than you would gain with the guns.

Can't think what the Aux Nano Pump rig does off the top of my head, but the other two are fine (Armour rigs are great!)

Any particular reason (short on fitting requirements?) for the 350mm Railguns instead of 425mm? Since you're sniping anyway, may as well take the big guns if you can fit them.

Don't really have any experience with sentry drones, but perhaps something like a target painter to use on enemies to improve their ability to hit things might be worth a thought.

I approve of the Fed Navy Antimatter ammo. It's great . I have the luxury of the T2 ammo for sniper ammo though, so don't use the Iron myself. Depending on your targeting range versus gun range though, might possibly be worth using something inbetween Iron and antimatter though, if Iron puts your gun range beyond your targetting range. Basically to use an ammo to get the most DPS out of it while still doing good damage at max targeting range. Good damage range being Optimal + half of falloff range as always. As long as Optimal + half falloff is about equal to or greater than your targeting range, you're good to go really, since you can do decent damage as soon as they become targetable.